On the cusp of 2013, I’ve invited 11 of the greater Houston area’s top minds to write about something they believe, but cannot prove. A new entry in the 11 for ’13 series will be published each morning during the holidays.

Today’s mini essay comes from Dr. Roberta Ness, dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health…

Today’s orientation toward obesity focuses on big people. We admonish big people for their bad habits. We are less likely to hire and promote them. Scientists have attempted to “cure” them with every diet and exercise program imaginable, but to no avail.

Obesity is a serious problem. The epidemic now engulfs a third of the U.S. population. It takes the lives of its victims 8-13 years on average before they achieve their normal life expectancy.

Ness.

I am of the belief (but it has yet to be proven) that we could put a dent in the obesity epidemic if we refocused away from big people and instead focused on Big Food. The increases in calorie consumption in the U.S. since 1970 are almost entirely a result of upsurges in processed sugars and oils.

My notion of moving the focus of combatting obesity from individuals to industry relies on the use of a radical reframing of the problem as described in: Innovation Generation: How to Produce Creative and Useful Scientific Ideas. Removing temptations from the food environment requires an approach to Big Food much like our approach to Big Tobacco. Rates of smoking have fallen by 60 percent in the past 50 years.

Dr. Cheryl Perry from The University of Texas School of Public Health summarizes the following interventions that worked in reducing tobacco use: 1) educating the public; 2) increasing cigarette prices; 3) restrictions on marketing; 4) keeping tobacco companies accountable. How would such strategies apply to Big Food?

First, few of us understand the nutritional content of what we eat. For instance, did you know that two slices of pepperoni pizza has about one quarter of your daily total allotment of calories and half your daily allowance of fat?

Second, keeping food cheap through agricultural subsidies is long-standing American policy. Corn, wheat and soybeans glut the market and have become the essence of low nutritional content foods. Shouldn’t we instead be subsidizing fruits and vegetables? Shouldn’t we either tax or limit portion sizes of foods that are nothing more than empty calories?

Third, from 1967-71, America instituted a “Fairness Doctrine” which mandated that for every three cigarette TV ads there needed to be an anti-smoking ad. How about a Fairness Doctrine for food?

Finally, legal action against Big Tobacco was possible whengovernment agencies began to hold them accountable.

To those who argue that the Big Tobacco/Big Food analogy is misleading because cigarettes are not needed for sustenance but food is, I say, “French fries are not needed for survival and these drive the obesity epidemic.” If we advocate for policy to change the habits of Big Food, we might have less need to change the habits of big people.

To see other 11 for ’13 entries, click here. And you can click here see entries from the 11 for ’11 series that I published a year ago, and here for the 11 for ’12 series.